Nuclear power plants can only be put where they can be cooled which usually means close to population centers where the large slow flowing rivers are. There continue to be restrictions on land use owing to fallout as far downwind from Chernobyl as the UK
Stodgy old protestant I'm afraid. I do get romanticized on slashdot which is a little uh, disturbing. I support nuclear power in naval propulsion applications but it is pretty clear that civilian nuclear power is a mistake. I have a fairly low acceptance-to-submission ratio for articles, around 0.16 last I checked.
Yes, actually. It remains in the ash which is the soil of the forest that became coal. It is about as radioactive as other low carbon soil that we are used to. It is fission which is unnatural and dangerous in this respect. Coal does have a problem with airborne mercury and sulfur.
They have released far more fission products which are the dangerous radioactive materials since we are not adapted to them. The ORNL page on this is complete BS.
'Less errors' is an error. You should write 'fewer errors.' But I doubt you'll thank me for that correction either. There are limits on the scale of nuclear power that have already been reached in most cases. We will never see even 5 GW reactors. A 5 GW solar plant in the Sahara is not out of the question though it is more likely to be PV owing to costs when such a plant might be built.
"We should develop the technology in pursuit of a goal, not the other way around," said senator Bill Nelson of Florida.
We adapted rocketry from military applications originally so the senator does not have his technology development path quite right. Working on solar system-scale propulsion does have an implicit goal of extending exploration beyond LEO but it is not necessary to name the first asteroid target to further the work since the problem is sufficiently generic. It is my experience that senators like to turn federal agencies into conduits of money for their states. With NASA simply becoming a purchaser of launch capability, the states will have to become more competitive with worldwide space commerce. Good for taxpayers but bad for pork.
You were mistaken in your comparison of solar and nuclear and remain so apparently. Solar does not face the same constraints as nuclear power on scale. Nuclear could use dry cooling as well but the cost of land would be prohibitive. Solar is already using the land so it does not have that additional cost. It is about available surface area as I said before. Efficiency is also an issue. Natural gas generation sometimes uses dry cooling but it is 60% efficient so there is less wasted energy to get rid of. Finally, if nuclear were to use dry cooling, it would still be producing thermal pollution whereas solar does not and may, depending on the surrounding albedo, produce slight local cooling since energy is exported.
I'm sorry you have such blocks to your comprehension. If I have to tell you to RTFA or look up dry cooling, as I did, then we can surly understand one source of your trouble.
Nuclear power plants use water because dry cooling would take up a much larger area. Solar already has a large area so dry cooling is not a problem. The scale of nuclear power is limited by the flow in the river. Already they disrupt the river ecology and have to be shut down from time to time. Nuclear power can't increase scale by becoming more efficient either because the fuel is fragile. So, it can not scale up any further. You were mistaken in saying that solar faces the same constraints as nuclear. It does not.
When nuclear power is admired for its scale, there is an error. It is non-dispatchable low quality power that is more an more frequently subject to unscheduled disruption with accompanying long delays in coming back on line, unreliability that can cause safety issues as in the Florida blackout. The only advantage of scale is cost but nuclear is not competitive http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E09-01_NuclearPowerClimateFixOrFolly
so there is no advantage. Wanting scale for scale's sake is a mistake.
You misunderstand the nature of nuclear waste. The biosphere is adapted to natural decay products. It is not adapted to fission products. Fission is very very rare in nature while natural decay chains are not.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone has been fooled by the coal is radioactive propaganda.
Entergy is hundreds of millions of dollars behind in its decommissioning fund for Vermont Yankee, more now that they have contaminated the site so badly: http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20100201/NEWS02/2010362/1003/NEWS02 It is not cheap power, it is creative bookkeeping.
Nuclear power plants can only be put where they can be cooled which usually means close to population centers where the large slow flowing rivers are. There continue to be restrictions on land use owing to fallout as far downwind from Chernobyl as the UK
Stodgy old protestant I'm afraid. I do get romanticized on slashdot which is a little uh, disturbing. I support nuclear power in naval propulsion applications but it is pretty clear that civilian nuclear power is a mistake. I have a fairly low acceptance-to-submission ratio for articles, around 0.16 last I checked.
Yes, actually. It remains in the ash which is the soil of the forest that became coal. It is about as radioactive as other low carbon soil that we are used to. It is fission which is unnatural and dangerous in this respect. Coal does have a problem with airborne mercury and sulfur.
Entergy claims they have saved Vermonters $300 million over 8 years http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2010/02/26/leaking_credibility_vt_yankee_must_step_up_or_face_closure/ But they have also failed to contribute to the decommissioning fund required for all nuclear plants and the deficit seems to be just about that much. So really, what they have been doing is faking cheaper power to constrain competition in a dishonest manner.
That would seem to blur regulating a licensee and running a licensee's power plant. The problem is more that the NRC seems to be generally supportive of a run-to-failure attitude in licensees and does not care at all about whistleblower protection. That is how Nuclear Fuel Services, for example, has run into a ditch. http://www2.tricities.com/tri/news/local/article/safety_issues_keep_nuclear_processing_work_on_hold_at_nfs/41758/ It should not be forgotten that the NRC was covering up a near criticality accident there four years ago http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/us/06cnd-nuke.html Failure to regulate is the problem with this regulatory agency.
They have released far more fission products which are the dangerous radioactive materials since we are not adapted to them. The ORNL page on this is complete BS.
'Less errors' is an error. You should write 'fewer errors.' But I doubt you'll thank me for that correction either. There are limits on the scale of nuclear power that have already been reached in most cases. We will never see even 5 GW reactors. A 5 GW solar plant in the Sahara is not out of the question though it is more likely to be PV owing to costs when such a plant might be built.
Entergy claims it has save Vermonters $300 million over eight years because of its electricity rates. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2010/02/26/leaking_credibility_vt_yankee_must_step_up_or_face_closure/ But this is just about what is lacking in the decomissioning fund for the plant that Entergy has failed to contribute to. Sure hope Entergy has that money available now to make up the deficit.
Thanks for that link. Bolden seems to me to inspire confidence in a way that other recent administrators did not. Looks like we'll get to Mars.
"We should develop the technology in pursuit of a goal, not the other way around," said senator Bill Nelson of Florida.
We adapted rocketry from military applications originally so the senator does not have his technology development path quite right. Working on solar system-scale propulsion does have an implicit goal of extending exploration beyond LEO but it is not necessary to name the first asteroid target to further the work since the problem is sufficiently generic. It is my experience that senators like to turn federal agencies into conduits of money for their states. With NASA simply becoming a purchaser of launch capability, the states will have to become more competitive with worldwide space commerce. Good for taxpayers but bad for pork.
You were mistaken in your comparison of solar and nuclear and remain so apparently. Solar does not face the same constraints as nuclear power on scale. Nuclear could use dry cooling as well but the cost of land would be prohibitive. Solar is already using the land so it does not have that additional cost. It is about available surface area as I said before. Efficiency is also an issue. Natural gas generation sometimes uses dry cooling but it is 60% efficient so there is less wasted energy to get rid of. Finally, if nuclear were to use dry cooling, it would still be producing thermal pollution whereas solar does not and may, depending on the surrounding albedo, produce slight local cooling since energy is exported.
I'm sorry you have such blocks to your comprehension. If I have to tell you to RTFA or look up dry cooling, as I did, then we can surly understand one source of your trouble.
I always find the oceans have uranium argument to be amusing. Guess you didn't read the rest of the paper. Seems pretty quantitative to me.
Nuclear power plants use water because dry cooling would take up a much larger area. Solar already has a large area so dry cooling is not a problem. The scale of nuclear power is limited by the flow in the river. Already they disrupt the river ecology and have to be shut down from time to time. Nuclear power can't increase scale by becoming more efficient either because the fuel is fragile. So, it can not scale up any further. You were mistaken in saying that solar faces the same constraints as nuclear. It does not.
When nuclear power is admired for its scale, there is an error. It is non-dispatchable low quality power that is more an more frequently subject to unscheduled disruption with accompanying long delays in coming back on line, unreliability that can cause safety issues as in the Florida blackout. The only advantage of scale is cost but nuclear is not competitive http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E09-01_NuclearPowerClimateFixOrFolly so there is no advantage. Wanting scale for scale's sake is a mistake.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/24/business/AP-US-Vermont-Yankee.html
They don't seem to be supportable once the source data are considered. http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.1421
You obviously did not read the papers I linked to. I'll highlight this one http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0909/0909.1421v1.pdf and you can go back an read another on why your breeder idea won't work.
You misunderstand the nature of nuclear waste. The biosphere is adapted to natural decay products. It is not adapted to fission products. Fission is very very rare in nature while natural decay chains are not.
Melt it down.
Go look it up then.
Mod this one clueless. Many reactors defaulted on loans.
http://www.reformer.com/localnews/ci_14458338
Do you understand at all what dry cooling means?
Might want to RTFA.